Sheriff's Search and Rescue members help the stranded

With lockboxes and prescription bottles and pet rats and rabbits, they left their homes for higher ground.

Water and mud and debris filled their Casitas Springs homes near Highway 33 north of Ventura. Now officials were concerned for their lives.

John Jeppesen didn't want to go.

Yes, Edison Road in front of his house had turned into a river early Monday morning, and the rain hadn't stopped for days, and some of his neighbors' houses were hip-deep with water, but Jeppesen didn't want to leave his house.

He'd lived there for 22 years, and although other houses had flooded in the past, his never had. But it wasn't the water that concerned officials, it was the hill behind his house that could go, swallowing him, his wife, everything.

It was time to choose.

"I'll be back in two minutes. You need to decide if you are going to go," said David Haas, a volunteer with Ventura County Sheriff's Department Search and Rescue team.

With up to 5 more inches of rain predicted Monday afternoon, officials were afraid that an already flooded area could turn deadly by afternoon. Like scores of other communities around Ventura County over the past few days, everyone along Edison Road had to be evacuated.

Haas moved on to others who were sure.

Over a chain-link fence

Water surged around Alan Davis' calves as he stood in the street. One hand held a lockbox of cash, the other a trash bag of clothes.

Rescue volunteer Ed Morlan passed Davis' elderly mother, Winetta Davis, over a chain-link fence to Haas. The two held Winetta Davis' hands and moved to the next house.

Shawna Harper slogged barefoot through the muck while following her sister, Kristin, who was carrying Shawna's pet rabbit in the zipper of one duffel bag and her rabbit in another. Neighbors offered to carry extra bags.

Water from the nearby raging Ventura River and runoff from the hillsides was everywhere.

Morlan yelled for everyone to get in a single-file line. Men clutched dogs as big as their chests. Shawna grabbed Kristin's muddied hand. The Harpers' dad, Rick Harper, had the family's two cats in a fruit box. Haas held tight to Winetta Davis. The line marched forward.

After a few steps, Rick Harper lost a tennis shoe in the muck that coated the road. He tossed the other.

Winetta Davis' breath became labored and tired. Haas shouldered her on his back and the line moved forward.

They moved up what was a street only in theory; it was more of a river holding memories. Water jugs floated by. A minivan tipped sideways into the mud, the radio still playing softly. Beer cans and propane tanks and kids' scooters bobbed in the muddied water. A railroad tie floated by.

"So sad," Shawna Harper said.

The line moved forward, through the water that reached the thighs and dirt that sucked in the feet, past the road signs that listed in the water.

The rain stopped.

Five minutes and 100 yards up Edison Road later, the group reached the Casitas Springs Community Center, where others who had made the same trek were waiting.

'I've cried all morning'

Neighbors swapped stories of whose property was more damaged.

"If you see a black Taurus in the front yard or living room, it's mine," joked Jayme Maddocks. She thought most of her house and belongings were destroyed, she said with a smile.

"I've cried all morning," she said. "I'm done crying."

In the center more accustomed to wedding ceremonies and church meetings, the air grew thick with warm bodies and wet dogs. Old women clutched muddied prescription bottles. Young children held their mother's hem.

Mike Galati brought in chicken soup and coffee and sandwiches his wife, Mary, had made. This is a small community, he said. People know each other. People help each other.

"It needed to be done," he said.

At Christmas the neighborhood is bright with luminaries. Most Fourth of Julys see potluck picnics.

They exchanged cell phones and names and figured ways to keep in touch while they wait out the storm.

Eventually, Jeppesen and his wife trudged to the community center. His sweatpants were wet to his thighs.

"I had no idea it was that deep down here," he said. "I couldn't imagine it could get like this."

The Jeppesens moved into the center, where parakeets and cockatiels sang softly from their cages.

Outside, Haas and Morlan delivered another resident to the community center. They hadn't stopped in three days, doing much of the same. Sometimes they had to swim through the waters, sometimes it was just ankle deep. They were tired and hungry.

They left the grass of the center for the water of the road. More people were waiting.